Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Mystery Surrounds Death of David Goldberg; Tsarnaev Weeps in Court; Revenge Porn Turns Woman's Life Upside Down; NYU Student Held in North Korea; Baltimore Police Commissioner Comments on Officer Charges. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 05, 2015 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:32:27] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

This mystery, this is what it is in Mexico. David Goldberg, husband of Facebook executive, Sheryl Sandberg, died in a bizarre accident while exercising. The family on vacation at a resort when Goldberg collapsed while on a treadmill. He was taken to a hospital where he later passed away. Goldberg was well known in the tech community, also CEO of surveymonkey. And in her best-selling book "Lean In," Sandberg called her husband her "best friend, closest adviser, dedicated co-parent, and love of my life." His funeral was today. President Obama offered this tribute. Let me read it: "David Goldberg embodied the definition of a real leader, someone who is always looking for ways to empower others."

I've got Rosa Flores with me.

Because, first of all, when I saw this treadmill, I thought, how many people are out on treadmills working out? You scratch your head over how this could happen. There's conflicting information now, correct?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is conflicting information. Let me tell you, I've been talking to people in this part of Mexico for hours now trying to piece this together. And there are still questions. That's just how difficult it is to follow this case.

In a nutshell, we're hearing from the A.G.'s office what you described. He was on the treadmill, he slipped and fell, hit his head --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: With what?

FLORES: We don't know.

BALDWIN: We don't know?

FLORES: Exactly. I was dissecting the version I got moments before coming on air. And that's exactly what it says. He slipped, fell. Hit his head getting a three-centimeter lesion on the back of his head. And that his brother, Robert Goldberg, found him on the floor. They transported him to the hospital. He died at the hospital. Here's one of the weirdest things about this -- so the A.G.'s office is telling us that this happened in a particular hotel in this part of Mexico at the four seasons. We talked to the four seasons, and they say that it didn't happen at that hotel. And just moments ago, before coming on air, this particular release that gives us the name of the individual at the hotel. I was on the phone with them, and they say this woman does not exist. So again, we're still trying to dig and put the pieces together because it must have happened somewhere -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: That's entirely bizarre. And just in general, do you even have stats on these kinds of accidents involving treadmills?

FLORES: We actually do. There's about 24,400 injuries associated with treadmills. These numbers that are gathered based on the hospital emergency reactions to people that actually go to the hospital because of these injuries about death. These are for the period of 2003 to 2012, 30 reported deaths associated with treadmills, so over a 10-year period.

[14:35:27] BALDWIN: Keep working the phones. Your heart goes out to the family. This is mysterious. Horrible for them.

Rosa, thank you very much.

It was subtle but unmistakable. Convicted Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, cried in court during testimony in his death penalty trial. It happened when his elderly aunt, who had flown from Russia, she took the stand. She was sobbing so hard, apparently, she was gasping for breath and had to leave the courtroom to get herself together. It was then that Tsarnaev began to silently weep and wipe his face. It is the most emotion this 21-year-old has shown since the trial began.

I've got Alexandra Field in the courtroom for all the testimony.

And you know, the first time I read about this, I thought, I am sure the survivors and their families are thinking this is so far from any remorse, right?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it was an interesting scene. This happened as the aunt was on the stand. She was more inconsolable than any of the survivors or family members who we've seen previously take the stand. She stepped down, couldn't even testify. For the first time, you see this sort of glimmer of emotion it seems from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. What was he thinking? Was he overcome with the emotion of seeing this aunt who he hadn't seen since he was 8 years old? Was he overcome by the fact that there were family members in the courtroom he might never see again? Was he feeling remorse? The prosecution wanted to seize on it right away. They're wondering what impression the jury will walk away with. The prosecution got up and on cross-examination tried to characterize it their own way. They said this is a person who cries at the death of a cartoon character but has shown no remorse for the suffering and sorrow of hundreds. The defense immediately objected to whatever line of questioning that that was introducing. The judge ruled in favor of the defense. The prosecution had to move on. Certainly the prosecution had the opportunity to make that point there. It was an interesting day in the courtroom to see the family members come forward, talking about Tsarnaev, described him as a warm, sunny child who cried during "The Lion King," a side that jurors had not heard about before. It focused primarily on what he was like as a young boy because, again, these are family members who have not seen him since he lived in Dagestan when he was just 8 years old.

BALDWIN: All right. Alexandra, thank you very much, with what's happening. The family members testifying there in that Boston federal courthouse. Thank you.

Make sure you also watch our CNN special, "Murder at the Marathon," what convicted Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, did after those attacks, 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific only here on CNN.

Coming up next, we have more news just in to us here. The police commissioner in the city of Baltimore telling CNN he is surprised that his officers were charged. What he was told 10 minutes before the charges were announced by the state's attorney on the front steps of the War Memorial last week.

Also, a woman's life turned upside down after she discovered she was secretly being recorded by the man she was dating and was posting pictures of her on line. We will take you inside the world of revenge porn, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:42:56] BALDWIN: Two words for you -- revenge porn. This is a growing cyber-war against women. This is an online movement devoted to shaming and humiliating people, primarily women, by posting nude photos of them without their permission. Usually happens, perhaps, when a bitter ex posts private photos on line. It can happen when a hacker takes control of a camera on your computer.

This is all part of a series we're doing at CNN this week, a special report with "CNN Money" tech correspondent, Laurie Segall.

This first one, she spoke with one victim who fears that everyone she meets has seen her naked.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIKKI, VICTIM OF REVENGE PORN: You can just hang or so whatever. What if I busted out into the "Running Man" right now?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: This is Nikki. She's young. She's beautiful. You would never know that she has a secret. That every time she meets you, every time she applies for a job, she wonders if you know -- if you've Googled her.

NIKKI: These are ones that were recorded of me or stolen off my computer. That's not allowed on TV -- (CROSSTALK)

SEGALL (on camera): If I were to Google your name, what would come up?

NIKKI: You would feel very close to me. You would feel like we even slept together. You would see me naked.

SEGALL (voice-over): It dates back to this guy she sarcastically calls Mr. Wonderful. You'll see why.

NIKKI: I had some troubles doing accounting home work. He popped up and said, hey, I just took accounting not too long ago and was pretty good. I can help you with the basics. Within two a half months of spending time with this gentleman, he lost it.

SEGALL: The strangest thing happened. Nikki started seeing red lights all around her room. One of them was coming from a pen holder.

NIKKI: I don't know what made me unscrew it because I -- I never heard of a pen cam at that point in time. And as soon as it opened up and there was a memory card in there my world started spinning. I felt as if nowhere was private anymore. It never dawned on me that that would end up being put on line with my personally identifiable information in a campaign against me.

[14:45:01] SEGALL: The images taken without consent were posted all over the web. Her case is an extreme example of what's known as revenge porn. Advocacy groups refer to it as nonconsensual pornography. For the next few years, Nikki's most private images would flood websites devoted to revenge porn. It would be picked up by third-party sites. Her naked images were everywhere.

NIKKI: Law enforcement, straight up, told me how do you want us to help you?

SEGALL: That's the million-dollar question whether it comes to revenge porn. So what law is being broken? That's not always clear. And that's why states are beginning to pass laws to criminalize this type of online harassment.

For Nikki's lawyer, Elisa, the cases are pouring in.

ELISA A'MICO, ATTORNEY FOR NIKKI: It's becoming an epidemic. So what do we do with Nikki? We asked her what page is your information on. And here are the four urls. She had hundreds.

SEGALL (on camera): Would you say it has affected your ability to get a job?

NIKKI: It affected my ability to walk into any interview. The second I walked in, looked them in the face, I just wanted to look away and crawl under a rock and die because I don't know what they've seen. And I didn't know how to bring it up.

SEGALL: If you could look at him now, what would you say to him? NIKKI: I would tell him, "thank you," for absolutely forcing me to

become the most amazing version of me that I never ever would have expected or known existed or would exist. I love me for the first time in my entire existence. It's because of the character building that I was forced to do because of this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Wow. Laurie Segall. I mean, the whole time I'm watching that like, I'm feeling my blood boiling for her.

SEGALL: I mean, that she was so powerful, right? Can you --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: What she said at the end, becoming her better self, still, that's wonderful? The fact that law enforcement said -- I wrote this down, "How do you want us to help you?"

SEGALL: That's probably reporting out the series one of the most unbelievable things. So many of these victims will call up law enforcement and say two things. Should have taken a picture, and what should we -- what can we do to help you? We can't help you. There aren't actually laws in play that can really help revenge porn victims.

BALDWIN: It hasn't caught up with the technology.

SEGALL: No. This is one of those things where technology's here, and the law is here. There's 17 states have criminalized revenge porn. People are just beginning to have this conversation. Got to tell you, I spoke to a law enforcement source and what he said was, you know, this is low priority for us. They just haven't 100 percent wrapped their head around that this is a crime. This is horrific if this happens to you. It can affect your ability to get a job and earn a livelihood.

BALDWIN: Does she have a job? Is she employed?

(CROSSTALK)

SEGALL: She now is employed after years. And she's really -- you know, her speaking with us was this moment she had of really deciding she didn't want to hide anymore. She said she spent so many months behind her computer, in the dark, Googling her name. Now she said, let people Google my name. Let people know this is what revenge porn looks like. We need to take a stand and support other people. We need to know that this is a problem. That we shouldn't victim shame people at f this happens to you. You'll see through the series, it's not just going to be -- you took a naked photo. This didn't happen to Nikki.

BALDWIN: It was in the pen in her room?

SEGALL: It was in a pen holder in her room. This guy was recording her. Worse, you have hackers who are breaking in and recording women without their knowledge. A guy is about to go to prison -- we talked to him right before, a revenge porn hacker. He talks about how, behind the camera, it didn't feel real and he would sell photos for $500 to $1,000 a pop.

BALDWIN: She's a brave cookie. Glad you're shining a spotlight on this. This is such an important issue to talk about. The laws need to catch up.

Thank you very much.

Coming up next, a traffic stop caught on camera. This man says he was unfairly pulled over by police, forcibly removed from his car.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN BROWN, STOPPED BY POLICE: Am I -- am I being placed under arrest?

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: You're not under arrest right now.

BROWN: I'm cooperating. I'm asking for a reason why we're being pulled over.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Put your hands up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: What happened after the video stopped rolling. The man who reported that, speaking there, Ryan Brown, joins me right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:53:23] BALDWIN: In a rare moment, North Korea has granted CNN exclusive access inside the secretive country, and an interview with a U.S. student being held for entering the country illegally.

CNN's Will Ripley sat down with the 21-year-old who says he wanted to be arrested -- Will?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, we learned about there college student's detainment over the weekend when we landed in Pyongyang. We requested to interview him. That request was granted earlier today. And the whole story got much more bizarre as he explained to us why he decided to take a semester off, travel to China, and cross the border into North Korea.

JOO WON-MOON, TRAVELED TO NORTH KOREA: I understand my parents and my loved ones are worrying a lot about me. But I would like to say that I'm -- I'm well, and there's no need to worry.

RIPLEY: North Korean state media reports Won-moon Joo, a 23-year-old New Jersey resident and South Korean national entered illegally crossing the China/North Korea border. He said he made it past two barbed wire fence, following a river until North Korean soldiers arrested him.

WON-MOON: I felt that by my entrance illegally, I acknowledge, but I thought that some great event could happen and hopefully that event could have a good question in the relations between the north and south.

RIPLEY (on camera): So what kind of great event did you think could happen?

WON-MOON: I -- of course I didn't -- not completely sure yet.

[14:54:50] RIPLEY (voice-over): This is the first message Joo has been able to send to family and friends since he was detained. South Korea's demanding immediate release of the college student and, of that, two other South Koreans who gave exclusive interviews to CNN. They're being held by the North Koreans on espionage charge, allegations South Korea calls baseless.

Joo remains under investigation but is hopeful his arrest will bring about some good.

WON-MOON: I hope that I will be able to tell the world how an ordinary college student entered the DPRK illegally. However, with the generous treatment of the DPRK, that I will be able to return home safely.

RIPLEY (on camera): Joo says he's being treated humanely. He has his own room, a private bathroom. What he doesn't have is access to a telephone. This interview really was his first opportunity to send a message to the outside world, but perhaps more importantly, a message to the South Korean government. Even though Joo's been living in the United States since 2001, he's a permanent resident. His family is still in the U.S. But he's a South Korean citizen. Now it's that government's job to figure out how to get this young man home.

And keep in mind, North and South Korea are still technically at war. They have no diplomatic relationship. Now these two common enemies share a diplomatic problem, and this young man has a very real possibility of ending up in a North Korean prison if they can't work it out -- Brooke?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Will Ripley, thank you very much.

I should add that CNN cannot verify whether North Korean officials told the U.S. student to make any of those comments.

The very same day the new attorney general in the United States, Loretta Lynch, met Freddie Gray's family, just in, now, we're hearing from Baltimore's police commission or when he found out about those charges now facing six of his officers and what he makes of them. The six were arrested on charges ranging from second-degree murder to assault. CNN's justice correspondent, Evan Perez, joins me live from Baltimore.

Just wrapped the interview.

What about Anthony Batts say?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, he had a lot to get off his chest today, it seemed like. And he described his surprise getting a phone call from the state's attorney for Baltimore city, Marilyn Mosby. Her description of what charges she was about to bring was mere minutes before she went out and told the world.

Here's how he described what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BATTS, POLICE COMMISSIONER, BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT: I found out that the state attorney was going on in what she was going to present probably about 10 minutes before she went on. She gave me a phone call and told me what she was about to do and that she was going on live. She told me what the charges were.

PEREZ: What were the first words when you heard that?

BATTS: I don't want to get into that so much. I can say I was probably surprised by the information that I heard.

I think that the state's attorney was focused on being independent in this particular investigation. She didn't want to be seen connected to the police organization. So the communication was limited as compared to what I'm used to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: He talked about the need for Baltimore police to work to build trust with this community. But as those words he talked about building trust with the state prosecutor building this case.

BALDWIN: Who's been on the job, as we've been reporting, about 100 days. I was talking to Jeff Toobin earlier, getting reaction from his -- being a prosecutor. He's saying it's than surprising that he would have only gotten a ten-minute heads up. At the end of the day, this is the city's chief prosecutor investigating the city police department. He's essentially the boss of that police department.

Here's what I'm also wondering. We know she was conducting these independent investigations along the way. How much communication did they have since the arrest of Freddie Gray?

PEREZ: They were getting briefings. He sat down with their office to understand what was happening. He had 45 to 50 people working on this case. So he thought, you know, they were going one direction, and he was quite surprised to hear that she was getting ready to bring charges. You know, that's one reason, Brooke, you remember, we were surprised that he handed over his case file a day early. I'm told one reason for that was they got a hint that something was coming, a surprise was coming. That's why they moved to turn over the investigation.

[14:59:29] BALDWIN: Interesting. Evan Perez, great interview with the police commissioner there in Baltimore. Thank you very much.

Now this.

We continue on. Hour two. CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We have new information about those two terrorists who tried to commit a massacre in Texas. ISIS now claiming responsibility for this failed ambush on the Prophet Muhammad cartoon drawing contest over the weekend. ISIS, in fact, hitting the airwaves of its own radio station -- yes, they have a radio station out of Mosul -- to call both Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, quote, "soldiers of the caliphate," saying this was the first of many attacks to come on U.S. soil.